How-To: Engine grounding kit (DIY)

lilolneon · Post by **lilolneon** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 5:38 pm

The purpose of upgrading the ground wires or the "Big 3" is to help reduce the dimming of lights when your stereo is thumpin at night and to help keep the volts stable in the car. Some will say use a bigger gauge wire like 2 or 0, but I find that 4 gauge works just fine as it is still an improvement over stock.

Materials Needed:
1 Battery Terminal Clamp

7' ft 4awg Wire (I used some from cartoys) cut to the lenghts below
30" Neg Batt - Block
15" Rear Block - Frame
7" Frame - Motor Mount
18" Neg Batt - Frame
10" Block - Batt Tray

(I am missing a few eye clamps due to my wreck.)

9 Eye Clamps for 4awg

The 30" Cable (longest one) has the battery terminal clamp on 1 end and an eye clamp on the other. The rest of the cables have eye clamps on both ends.

To Clamp the wire cut off 1/2" of the rubber insulation on each end of the wires. Slide the clamps on then clamp them. This can be hard, i had to use a block of wood and a hammer to get them to clamp tight. You might be able to use a pair of strong pliars to clamp them also.

Once you have everything clamped its time to move under the hood. (Make sure your car hasnt been driven for a few hours so its nice and cool.)

Removal of stock:
The first and most important step is to disconnect the negative battery cable and make sure it wont be prone to touching the neg terminal. (better safe than sorry)

Figure 1

Take the bolt of of the driver side fender infront of the fuse box and set the bolt to the side. At the stock Neg terminal clamp remove/cut the tape that holds it to the Pos wire. (may have to do a few times along the wire) As you follow the wire it will go down a sheeth to the front of the engien to the bottom by the starter. Simply unbolt that bolt and set it to the side. You will notice a flat silver wire running to the battery tray. To remove that wire you will need to unbolt it from the tray. The bolt is located on the underside of the tray so follow the wire with your hand till you find it. If you have a cold air intake removing the battery tray groudn is easy. If not you will have to remove your stock airbox.

Figure 2

The passenger side is much easier to work on as it only has 3 easy to reach bolts to remove. There is a bolt on the top of the fender, one infront/beside the motor mount, and one behind the engine on the pass side.

Once everything is removed take a flathead screwdriver or some rough sandpaper and sand/scratch away the paint on the fender bolt holes. You want the groudn wires to actually touch metal and not paint.

Installation of new:

On the passenger side take the 15" wire and bolt it to the back of the block. and set the other end on top of the fender. Now take the 7" wire and bolt it infront/beside the motor mount and run the other end to the fender. Now bolt the 2 ends on the fender in place with the 1 bolt. (See Figure 2) The passenger side is now done.

On the driver side take the 30" wire and run the eye clamp side through the sheeth like the stock wire was. Let the end sit there. Now take the 10" wire and bolt one end to the bottom of the battery tray and run the other end to the eye clamp end of the 30". Bolt the 30" and 10" together on the block by the starter (See Figure 1) Now take the 18" wire and bolt it to the driver side fender infront of the fuse box, and run the other end to the new negative terminal clamp. Take the nut off the neg terminal clamp and slide the end of the 18" on and put the nut back on.

Make sure all bolts are properly tightend, then place the new negative terminal clamp on the negative terminal and tighten.

Thats it!

Here are 2 more pics for reference.

If anyone sees any problems or has any suggestions, please feel free to chime in and let me know.

Disclaimer: As with all how-to's, I take no responsibility for any problems or damage caused by this mod...

Anonymous User · Post by **Anonymous User** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 11:57 pm

is a eye clamp the same thing as a o-ring terminal? also should list what size opening for the eye clamp.

lilolneon · Post by **lilolneon** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 4:57 am

When I was at Home Depot to get the eyeclamp things, they only had 1 size that would fit 4awg wire. As far as the o-ring terminal, im not sure.

eastwoodsn352 · Post by **eastwoodsn352** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:14 am

go to a stereo store

OB · Post by OB » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:16 am

cool write up nice job mang

grambo · Post by **grambo** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 11:35 am

I read it pretty fast....what about the alternator?

lilolneon · Post by **lilolneon** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:17 pm

Supposedly the 2 wires on the passenger side are the Alt. Groudn wires. I could be entirely wrong. But I personally never found any other groudn wires under the hood. Again, I could be wrong. If someone knows how to better answer this question, someone PLZ chime in.

grambo · Post by **grambo** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:19 pm

There is one wire that should go directly onto the alternator......but where? I have not hooked mine up yet cuz I haven't persued it very much.

jT · Post by jT » Wed Jul 05, 2006 1:42 am

One thing...... you didn't mention anything in your write up about a fuse, yet you clearly are using a fuse (and your first image of the wires didn't have a fuse), or was that for a different upgrade...

And your Big 3 is all grounding, where other Big 3's also do the alt->batt positive cable, there should be a consensus of all and create a Big 6 or something..

http://forum.2gn.org/viewtopic.php?t=3859

Nick Drake · Post by **Nick Drake** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:55 am

^^The wire with the fuse on it is his power cable going to his amp. It's just there to keep jumps in voltage from frying his amp.

seisephiroth · Post by **seisephiroth** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 10:42 pm

YAY TOPIC NECROING

newho doesn't improving the ground sytem squick a few more HP out of the engine

jt's neon · Post by **jt's neon** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:41 am

Well I followed this DIY and every wire fit perfect. It was an excellent write up and I would like to add that if you want to use black wire, like I did , there is a less expensive way. I called around trying to locate black 4 ga wire, amp shops that carried wanted like $2.80 a foot. Called autozone, claimed they carried 4 ga bulk battery wire. They didn't, but premade wires, 72" and 20" and it was $11.00. And it had connectors attached. So saved a bit of cash and achieved the look!

OB · Post by OB » Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:01 am

ive been thinking about this mod very seriously lately, since ive been doing electronics for the past month in class. I took the time to shave some of the paint away under the stock grounds, and even that made a difference. the headlights dont dim as much when using other accessories (like windows). Very cool. Im gonna look into doing the ground mod sometime soon, since its cheap and im being educated in how to do it anyways.

Nick Drake · Post by **Nick Drake** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 1:55 pm

Yeah it's not like it's gonna hurt anything, I'd go for it.

I was actually thinking about it too when I was putting the wire away at work.

MoparNeonMan · Post by **MoparNeonMan** » Sun May 13, 2007 8:30 pm

The ground on the driver side of the trans....can someone post up info on this? I had an RT trans swapped in and they did not attach the ground strap. I know where it comes from.....but what is the other wire he mentiond attaching @ the starter?

kc2005ptgt · Post by **kc2005ptgt** » Mon May 14, 2007 12:47 am

It is the one circled in red in the bottom left corner

MoparNeonMan · Post by **MoparNeonMan** » Mon May 14, 2007 2:50 am

well Ive got the attachment point on the trans....is that the only one? Where does the other end attach? Is that the only one?

BlackRoseRacing · Post by **BlackRoseRacing** » Fri May 18, 2007 5:17 am

kc2002acr wrote:

It is the one circled in red in the bottom left corner

A little tip for those of you going to do this....
1 - In the above picture where the ground strap is bolted to the sheetmetal just below the PDC, dont do it. 2003+ neons have a ground strap there from the factory already causing problems due to corrosion and the loosening of that mounting screw. If you plan on mounting to the sheetmetal like that, drill a hold and mount a stud double nutted to the sheetmetal to create an acutal grounding post. Then attach your wires to the grounding post Vs just screwing it to the sheetmetal. I just used a strut mounting bolt as my grounding point, but that will change.

2 - Goto Wallyword and pick up a cheap amp install kit, it will include more than enough wire to do the DIY grounding kit.

3 - Pick up some heat shrink tubing that will fit the wire you are using for the grounding kit. Slide the heat shrink onto the wire before you install the terminal like in the above pictures. Once you have the terminal clamped down to the wire(and soldered

) slide the heat shrink tubing over the termainal end and the wire, heat up the shrink tubing for it to shrink and enjoy the pro looking ground wire you just created

MoparNeonMan · Post by **MoparNeonMan** » Fri May 18, 2007 5:21 am

Also does it matter the size of the braids? Ive actually got in home electrical kinda wire and instead of hundreds of real small wires, mine have6 or so largeer wires.....that wont matter will it?

BlackRoseRacing · Post by **BlackRoseRacing** » Sat May 19, 2007 8:04 am

^^^
For the hell of it, take a multimeter and measure the resistance for a one foot section of that wire your reffering to. It should be fine, but the whole point of this is to ground things out, so you want the minimum on the resistance...

TheNumberOneD · Post by **TheNumberOneD** » Sun May 20, 2007 9:11 pm

10.59 from Car Toys
2.99 from Pep-boys

= 14.58 for 4gauge ground kit.

would only take 15 so minutes, if you know were your looking.

I took my throttle body bellow tube out so i could get to the block from battery, and the other one, so it ended up taking me around 30 minutes.

I used gold o-rings, and i didn't solder the wires to them, i just stripped enough back so i could hammer the connectors down, and wrapped the exposed wire with electrical tape.

Looks awsome, pictures avaible from request.

Craz1000 · Post by **Craz1000** » Tue May 22, 2007 12:40 am

no offence, but i think its hilarius when people waste thier time doing this mod to 'help stop dimming' from a system

i have a system with total RMS (NOT PEAK) power at 1500w and all i have is 2 caps with factory wiring, and i get absolutely NO dimming watsoever, yea this will help a little but with a 600+ RMS system, its not going to help enough to justify the time and money spent doing this. this has been floating arround at the 12volt for a while, honestly if you have 4awg wire lying arround and you have something thats less than 600w RMS and have absolutely no money to do it right, then yea i would say go for it

MoparNeonMan · Post by **MoparNeonMan** » Tue May 22, 2007 12:48 am

And what of those of us with aluminum flywheels and udp's? What then? Some of us have lots of draw (stereo, acc lighting, etc) that we have/want to overcome.

Craz1000 · Post by **Craz1000** » Tue May 22, 2007 12:55 am

yea and your point being.... 'Big3' isnt going to help your situation with the UDP hardly any, the factory ground wire is more than enough to transfer power with the stock charge/electrical system, adding a bigger wire to a now slowed down alt isnt really fixing the fact that you just slowed down the alt and are now getting less current and/or voltage output. thats like lowering the water pressure in the house and replacing all the pipes to bigger pipes to get pressure back to what it was before, see the problem?

the way you fix the problem you get from the UDP is getting a high output alt.

anomalous0 · Post by **anomalous0** » Tue May 22, 2007 1:09 am

As DC current travels along a wire, it suffers a voltage drop. The larger the wire (lower gauge numbers), the less of a voltage drop it suffers.
A grounding kit helps with the underdrive pulley because with larger gauge wire, your electrical system has less resistance. The alternator can't produce as much voltage at idle with an underdrive pulley, though at a high RPM it'll be just fine. Grounding wires do for your electrical system what an underdrive pulley does for your engine. They cut your losses.

P.S. My headlights are brighter now at idle, with my underdrive pulley and grounding kit, than they were stock. They are still not as bright as they were when I had the grounding kit but not the pulley though.

MoparNeonMan · Post by **MoparNeonMan** » Tue May 22, 2007 1:58 am

And its so worthless an idea...whay is it that the Subes show not only voltage gains...but actual hp gains from this process? Im not sayin th neon will show hp gains....but the concept remains.

Craz1000 · Post by **Craz1000** » Tue May 22, 2007 2:03 am

ok anomalous0 answer this in what direction dose dc flow

as far as volatage gains, where was the reading taken at and was the car on? $10 bucks says it was taken at the battery before and after and the car was on also

MoparNeonMan · Post by **MoparNeonMan** » Tue May 22, 2007 2:09 am

Which way does electricity flow?
We say that electricity flows from the positive (+) terminal of a battery to the negative (-) terminal of the battery.

So......whats your point???

Craz1000 · Post by **Craz1000** » Tue May 22, 2007 2:23 am

electrons flow (http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/murphy/HoleFlow/default.html)from negative to positive, and it is electrons that provide electrical current. on the stock ground you have a 6 or 5awg run for about 2 feet, changing to a bigger guage at that short of a run is pointless if you dont intend on increasing electron flow (amperage) also, the stock guage can handle the demand if not little more than the stock alt/battery combo. yea you might increase voltage but guess what, current flow (amperage) stays the same. the only time a voltage increase will help is if your trying to increase the wattage of lets say an amp, so lets say you do change the wire, yea you will most likely increase voltage resulting in increased power output of your amp but guess what, that only makes the 'dimming headlight' problem

WORSE!

MoparNeonMan · Post by **MoparNeonMan** » Tue May 22, 2007 2:27 am

WRONG!!!!

Voltage is pre determined by the alt and the voltage regulator. Thats why its there. You will not increase voltage you will increase amperage. Think of it as a water pipe. Voltage is pressure amperage is flow.

Go back to electrical school rookie and try again next year.

EDIT...I suppose now your gpnna come back with your mpec what not...my father is 53 years old and has worked electronics all his life.....Im gonna trust him first......